The True Dangers of Lantern Waste
by Hiron Otsuki
Summary: In the month of October in the tenth year of the Golden Age, the land of Narnia was in the midst of a great battle. . . . A plague was sweeping across the land-one that walked on two feet that had eyes and hair the colors of jewels and unnatural things.


**Disclaimer: **I don't own it. C.S. Lewis's estate does.

* * *

The history books do not mention this terrible time, nor the losses that were incurred on the Narnian side of the war. It was the one time in Narnian history that both good Narnians and evil creatures that has once been in the White Witch's army fought as one.

In the month of October in the tenth year of the Golden Age, the land of Narnia was in the midst of a great battle. . . .

#

A beautiful young woman wandered amidst the trees of Narnia, reaching out to touch a silver birch. "Oh trees, trees, wake," she sang in a beautiful soprano. Her black hair shone with red and blue highlights, and as the dappled sun fell between the leaves and onto her arms, bruises appeared on her arms. A shaft of sunlight illuminated a sign taped to her back that said "KICK ME".

A dark form flickered between two distant trees, and the young woman flinched. "Aslan," she whispered, "I am alone here as I was at home. Please protect me."

_Twang! _

An arrow took the ethereal girl in the gut and she fell to the ground, gasping for breath. Axe ready, a Black Dwarf leapt upon her chest and finished her off, and the otherworldly light that shone out of her sky-on-a-perfect-day-blue eyes died in an instant as the Dwarf scuttled off to help his fellows hunt and destroy more women and girls.

"Ho, Dwarf!" a centaur hailed him, and the Son of Earth paused in his duties. "What news have you for the High King?"

"The women appear as fast as we cut them down, but they are appearing in the darker areas of the forest now. We are allowing the Hags and evil creatures their right to hunt."

Mountainrage nodded. "They realize that the danger is to them as well as us, and this allows them to sate their hunger on things other than good, loyal Narnians."

As if on cue, a werewolf shot out of the trees, howling in anguish. "It burns! The white light burns!" It collapsed to the ground, whimpering and clawing at the air.

Mountainrage and the Dwarf watched in awe as the monster shriveled and twisted, losing its fur and long ears, and the wolf's muzzle shrank back into the mouth of a man.

"By the Lion's Mane," Mountainrage whispered. "They have cleansed the werewolf of his. . . _wolf_."

There was a pause.

"Kill them all!"

#

In Cair Paravel, the legion of creepy girls was even worse.

Peter swatted a silver-haired girl away with the flat of his sword.

"I've been touched by _Rinduuuuuuuur!_" she shouted, and the other girls took up the cry.

"That's Rhindon!" he yelled as a well-placed arrow took the girl in the chest.

"Thanks, Su!"

"There are too many of them!" Tumnus shouted as he and a group of Dryads attempted to bar the doors to the Great Hall.

"I say, this does seem a bit—Tumnus, look out!" Edmund shouted as the doors opened a crack and an alabaster-white arm reached through. It dragged Tumnus through the widening opening, and his face was frozen in a mask of horror. Lucy immediately reached for the flailing hands of her oldest and dearest friend, and her expression was anguished as he slipped from her grasp and was pulled through the door.

"Tumnus!" she screamed, tears streaming from her eyes. "Tumnus, say something! _Tumnus!_"

"He's gone, Lu," Edmund cried, dragging her away from the door as Peter and Susan pushed the High Table toward the rest of the rapidly weakening barricade.

"Tumnus!"

On the other side of the door, a bevy of female voices took up the cry of "Tumnus! Tumnus!" with lust in their voices. A thin, disconsolate cry wound through them, as one girl shouted, "He should be taller!" A pause, then "Stretch him!" someone shouted. Tumnus began screaming.

"There's nothing you can do!" Edmund soothed his sister as she pounded at the door and was shoved back in by thin, white arms.

"_TUMNUS!_"

#

A multicolored bag emblazoned with a picture of a woman that looked as though she had been stitched together fell to the ground as a Horror and a Talking Leopard advanced upon the girl who had been holding it. Idly, the Leopard wondered that if a woman ever looked like that, he should begin worrying.

The girl cried out softly and moaned something too soft to hear before the Horror screamed, swooped in and enveloped her in darkness while the Leopard leapt upon another of the girls that had run away from a light emanating from a point in the thickest of the trees.

"Look!" the Leopard shouted around a mouth stuffed full of girl and black-and-silver shirt. The Horror stopped poking at a small silver disc that had fallen out of the bag, and the disc flipped over to reveal the face of a lion.

Yet another girl appeared out of the light. It spotted the Leopard and began to back away, and then her huge violet eyes lit upon something beyond the Leopard.

"_Ohmigawdissasentoor!_" she screamed, eyes growing bigger. "_Ahawtsentaoorinshiniearmurand—_" the screeching cut off in a gurgle as the man that had been a werewolf sneaked up behind her and ran a knife across her throat.

"I feel much better now," he declared as grey fur sprouted along his arms.

"This one seemed to be more verbal than the rest," Mountainrage observed as he kicked the body all the way across the clearing and into a tree.

They approached the source of the light and found themselves facing a stand of trees, and in the middle they would see a view of what seemed to be—the Leopard shook his head. There appeared to be various images swirling beyond a plain wooden frame, which varied between hallways full of oblivious children laughing and talking in hallways lined with metal boxes, other views of bathrooms, bedrooms, or frozen classrooms. In the midst of all of the possibilities stood a golden lion.

"Aslan. . . ."

He looked adoringly upon still more doorways that looked upon girls with impossibly blue, green, violet, grey, orange, and still more out-of-the-norm color eyes, and the girls stared back with expressions of fear, awe, knowledge, challenge, or obeisance.

The Talking Beasts of Narnia began to bow, and the evil creatures to recoil when the Leopard noticed something. The too-bright fur; the too glassy eyes; the unmoving-in-a-false-wind mane; the glazed expression. . . .

"It's a false idol!" he shouted, and the stares directed at the lion became hostile.

In a matter of moments, the false Aslan had been ripped to rags, bits of cotton fluff, and shreds of spun acrylic.

"How do we close the. . . . doorway?" the Dwarf shouted.

"That is my concern, Son of Earth," a deep voice told him.

"Aslan!"

"The true Aslan," the Lion said. "I thank you for removing the false idol and for realizing that it was not I."

"He's not a _tame _Lion," a Fox whispered in the Leopard's ear.

"Now I shall deal with this terror that is the Deep Magic in its most vile form."

The Evil creatures that were the Ghouls and Incubi and Spectres vanished, and even the Narnians put space between themselves and the Great Lion.

"It is Canon!" Alsan growled. "It is Sense! It is Reality!"

The Narnians wondered at these words, and Aslan roared.

"Canon! Sense! Reality!"

He waited for a few terrible moments, and then roared again. "Rise!"

A horrible shuddering ensued in the earth, and mounds of Earth rose up and covered the petrified, too-perfect girls and drew them into itself. The strange doorway snapped shut to contain a terrible red glow.

"Aslan?" an Eagle ventured when it was over. "Where have they been sent?"

"I only tell someone their own story," the Lion chided gently. "Be relieved that I have sent them to a place where they belong."

#

"Ugh, this cold and frost is like, destroying my hair."

Multiple nods agreed with that statement.

"What have we here?" A large voice from far above stated it more than asked it.

The girls didn't dare turn around.

"Guests for the Autumn Feast?"

One turned around and was confronted by two of the largest people she had ever seen silhouetted against light beaming from the windows of a huge, imposing house at the top of a high crag.

"Hello, ducky!"


End file.
